


Not Afraid

by SadMageCentral



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Anxiety Attacks, City Elf Culture and Customs, Fade Demons, Flashbacks, Formerly Tranquil Inquisitor (Dragon Age), Gen, Mild Gore, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition Quest - In Hushed Whispers, References to Depression, Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2020-06-23 02:49:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19688248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SadMageCentral/pseuds/SadMageCentral
Summary: Elgara Lavellan, though supposedly born into a clan of Dalish elves, was raised by the community of the alienage — that is, until she displayed signs of magic and had to be taken away to the Circle, where she was eventually made Tranquil. Now that her emotions have been returned thanks to the Mark — which she sincerely believes to be a special boon, as she venerates both the Creators and Andraste, as an ancient heroic slave liberator — she struggles with managing them. Quick both to laugh and to cry and to panic, easily overwhelmed and rather ashamed of it, she does not always make the right choices, especially when deciding the fate of her enemies is concerned. But still, she presses on.





	Not Afraid

**Author's Note:**

> Elgara is basically Sula in a city elf AU (a note for those familiar with Sula).

There is a whole pantheon of gods out there. The Gods of old. The Creators and guardians of the Elvhenan.

They have been locked away in the abyss, and their light has faded with the memories of Arlathan. But some of their influence still lingers. Some of their essence is still preserved. In the air and the water, in the deep forest moss and the silvery sheen of a halla's coat.

These gods are still remembered by the People. Including her birth parents from a Dalish clan, whom she knew only for the first few days of her life, not nearly too well to remember.

Apparently, they could not raise her for whatever reason, and left her behind on the outskirts of a human city, to be picked up in her tiny wicker basket and carried to the safety of what the humans would call a knife-ear shack, and she would call a home. So she was told by her new family, with a kind of tremulous, apologetic tone, as if they were not enough (which is not true! her Mom and Mamae have always been more than enough!).

She would like to learn more about these gods some day. More than the alienage hahren has shared, in snatches of whispers, with furtive glances for round-eared shadows around the corner.

About Sylaise, whose name the Dalish woman must have invoked as she carried her under her heart. And about June, with whose tools that wicker basket was made. And about Mythal, whose sacred tree reached with its mighty roots even into her alienage, where the intricate weave of its branches was reflected in the vhenandahl's rustling crown, and in the strokes of red and white paint across its trunk, and also in the little etchings along the door frame, which you traced with your fingertips before going in.

She would like to understand these gods better, and welcome them into her heart. But apart from the faith in the Creators - a precious secret safeguarded from humans - she was also raised to revere Andraste.

A special kind of Andraste. An Andraste that the Sisters serving her Circle would later try to whip out of her and the other elven apprentices. A slam of a ruler across your knuckles, leaving a dent; a shrill, screeching voice in your ear, splitting your little skull from within.

The Sisters, humans one and all, did not like the 'blasphemous' stories that she brought with her to the tower, when her magic awoke, about a decade and a half ago, as she had just entered her teens, and the Templars came for her, and she saw Mom and Mamae one last time, with her throat tight and hot and her head feeling swollen as she was trying desperately to pack all of her memories of the alienage inside it.

Not leaving anything out.

Storing everything away.

Every face, every sound, every smell, every texture, every splash of colour.

Right down to the orange squares of evening light on the kitchen floor and the squelch of dirt under her bare feet just after the rain.

Preserving and cataloguing all of this in the nooks and crannies of her brain. So she could take it carefully out in the Fade at night, and show to the spirits, asking them to recreate the memories of her childhood. According to the Templars, those little performances were something she needed to be afraid of - but she has never been afraid of spirits. Even the howling, tooth-gnashing, red-eyed ones, who just looked this way because they were in pain.

It has been years and years since that day, the day of turning her back on the anguished, tear-streaked faces of those who had taken her in as a daughter, a sister, a neighbour, a friend, and called her Elgara because of all the sunshine they said she'd brought into their lives. Years and years; and despite all the rulers and the screeches, she still believes in that special Andraste. Her alienage's Andraste.

A mythical hero of old. A mighty battlemage that walked with the elves, and fought for the elves, and, if you asked hahren, might even have been an elf herself.

The protector of slaves.

The friend of the smallfolk.

Always ready to listen, to soothe and to understand, even as the human Maker was distracted by the scented candle smoke in the gilded Chantry halls, with tall stained-glass windows that Elgara would have loved to admire up close but was not allowed to.

She believes in that Andraste, and tries her best to be just like her. And she is very honoured, and very excited - to the point of her breath thinning out into an incoherent squeak - that the ghost of this great hero decided to pull her out of the Fade, just as the clicking pincers of the voracious, nightmarishly giant spiders grazed her ankles. And shielded her from the explosion that punched a jagged hole through an entire mountain and melted down the imposing walls of the Temple of Sacred Ashes.

And, most importantly, she is overwhelmed by the thought that this incredible adventure brought her emotions back.

She had been cut off from the Fade for nearly three years when the Conclave was called together.

She has never been afraid of spirits. She has always thought that they are just like people. Capable of twisting beyond recognition when they are scared, or hurt, or lose someone they care about.

Like how Uncle Killian, once the merriest, most apple-cheeked elf to strum a modest self-carved lute while the others danced, turned grey and bony like a Despair wraith after his wife died.

Or how their neighbour two doors down, Lynni the street sweeper, usually serenity incarnate, with her long thick eyelashes always casting down a fluttering shadow on her cheeks, flushed a vivid crimson, and drew herself up to her full height like a Rage demon rising out of the cracked earth, when some mischievous boys wanted to play Emerald Knights and broke the broom with which she was earning the livelihood for herself and her son.

Those two events, a big tragedy and a small hardship, happened really close to one another. And it was when Uncle Killian's lute began to strum itself as he sat in his room, worn out and listless and seemingly all alone, and when Lynni's broom glowed bright green and soared into the air, and the splinters began shoving against one another and clumsily attempting to fit back in place, that the alienage realized that Elgara might have magic... But that is neither here nor there.

She has never been afraid of spirits. And she was certainly not afraid of the spirit that was bound to a sigil in a small (rather cramped, really) pocket of the Fade and used to test the apprentices from her Circle during the Harrowing. She saw how much its sizzling, burning ghostly-purple tethers were hurting it, and set it free.

This counted as a failure of her Harrowing, and earned her a brand on her forehead - a bleeding, swollen imprint of the sun, which made her name ever so eerier. With the brand, came a plunge into dense, heavy fog, where she wandered on and on, with her heartbeat dulled and her mind pristinely, blindingly white, like a room with a blanket over every piece of furniture.

Until she travelled to Haven with Minaeve and the other Tranquil, and met the ghost of Andraste.

The blankets are off now. There is a multitude of different shapes in that room inside her mind now. A multitude of different emotions. Prodding and poking her, sometimes all at once, sometimes in rapid succession, sometimes in a bizarre spinning cycle.

Like an abrupt stab of fear, when Seeker Cassandra pointed a sword at her and barked 'Tell me why we shouldn't kill you now?' - which was suddenly drowned out by sinking into the pink, squishy, glitter-speckled goo of 'Oh no, she is attractive!'.

Or bounce of squeaky, puppy-like excitement, when Solas the apostate invited her to a conversation about spirits - which was followed by even more of pink and gooey 'Oh no, he is also attractive! Everyone is so attractive, and I can feel happy about it again, instead of impassively describing the symmetry of their faces!'.

She loves it. She loves that she can love it.

She loves that she can feel relieved, and just a little bit smug, each time she closes a Rift in the Veil with her mysterious Mark, and the people that she has just saved from demons crowd around her, scarcely able to breathe with shock and an overpowering wave of gratitude.

Of course, she never stopped helping people, not even as a Tranquil. Seeing others worse off than her, hungry while she was full, injured while she was in perfect health, sobbing while she was always impenetrably calm, seemed illogical to her white-wrapped mind, and therefore undesirable. So she shared meals, and clothes, and bandages, and monotonously recited facts that proved that the person's distress was statistically unlikely to last forever. In order to protect the other Tranquil, along with some of the young and elderly mages, when their Circle fell and they found themselves afloat in the broiling crucible of war, she even took up sword lessons from a sympathetic ex-Templar.

But now - now saving innocents, and mending the green wounds in the fabric of the world, and putting corrupted spirits to rest, like she had done during her Harrowing, actually puts a smile on her face. A real, sincere smile, accompanied by a sort of warmth, a sort of brightness inside her chest, like those sun squares on the kitchen floor.

It is not all sunshine, though. Sometimes, the prodding of emotions in her mind grows too strong, so that her brain wobbles, close to puncturing.

Sometimes, tears come gushing out of her eyes unprompted, and she feels the urge to pound her fists against the nearest wall, a scream scraping at the back of her throat like a feral cat.

Sometimes, even the happy bark of a friendly mabari is too loud. Even the whiteness of a small patch of snow in the streets of Haven is too searing.

As a Tranquil, this was all just a part of her foggy world. But now that the Mark graced her hand, every tiniest thing, every face, every sound, every smell, every texture, every splash of colour, has started invoking emotions, and there is only so much that she can pack.

And then, there are the bigger things.

The clamour of steel against steel, which so often fills the air, like half-formed bubbles fill the water when it reaches boiling pount.

The deafening, dazzling bursts of magic, unleashed by Solas, and Madame Vivienne, and their newest companion, Dorian of Minrathous. And the slither of magic through her own veins, awoken by the Mark but still not quite under her control.

And the dreams - oh dear gods, the dreams.

She has lost count of times when Solas has had to walk beside her through the Fade and help her calm down the poor spirits that would begin to writhe at the sight of her, with their peaceful, vaguely human-like see-through faces beginning to twist in a snarl. Because her head is now filled with more than just memories of cozy evenings in Mom and Mamae's company. There is war there, and desolation, and death.

There are the Temple's ruins. Carpeted by contorted red-and-black husks, with the last of the hugry green wildfire still picking out the last crisp morsels out of their sockets.

There are unnatural red crystals pushing out of cavern walls, throbbing with heat like infected teeth, with a whispering darkness oozing out of them.

There is the once broad, safe, well-paved road, now burrowed by fleeing refugee carts and pockmarked by shallow blackened pits that were left by magefire blasts; while desperate apostates and bloodthirsty raiders that still wear Templar armour crouch behind charred logs on either side of it, readying their weapons for another skirmish.

And there is that horrible, wrong, wrong, wrong future that she has only visited just recently. A future where the world was a smattering of barren islands floating in a green abyss under a sunless, moonless, starless sky, sucked one by one into the insatiable vortex of the Breach. Where mortals and spirits alike were reeling from a year's worth of torture, whipped into submission by cultists from Tevinter.

'My less good-natured, and certainly less good-looking countrymen,' Dorian would call them, with a wry smirk splitting across his face to hide a crushing mix of outrage and grief with which he looked around him and fired his defensive spells.

It was probably a very good disguise, that smirk, but Elgara still noticed the other, darker emotions through it, as you do after spending three years surrounded by the vacant faces of your Tranquil siblings.

In that future, her companions - her friends, she thinks (unless she has let herself be carried away by the excitement of shared adventures and started using the word too soon) - were locked away in dungeon cells. Rather like the ones some Circles used to discipline rowdy young mages. With barely enough space to spread out your arms, and with a constant trickle of moisture that coated the walls in a sticky, tar-like film...

Except there was a single, gut-pulling difference that set those cells apart from the Circle solitary. Those crystals - again. Drooping from every surface like gigantic clusters of poisoned grapes - and, with time, crawling underneath the prisoners' skin, welling up at the bottom of their straining lungs, rising above their spine like the crested back of a dragon, and hardening their veins into lumpy threads of crimson glass. Absorbing every inch of them, every sliver, till they turned into crystal themselves, to be 'harvested' and used to feed the cultists' guardsmen, most of whom were scarcely human any more, deformed into their most demonic selves, with huge jagged humps and gem-hard scarlet claws for fingers and stretched-out mouths full of far too many, far too sharp teeth... Probably with no going back to who they used to be, Creators save their souls.

Perhaps, some day she will be able to move on from living nightmares like these without dissolving into a wailing wreck (which, among other things, is probably very embarrassing for the Herald of Andraste).

Perhaps, some day she will start seeing just Mom and Mamae's faces at night, and the faces of all the new, kind people that she has met on her journey, with no shadows looming around the corner.

But that day has not come yet. In fact, her spikes of emotion have gotten worse since they returned from Redcliffe.

She guesses that it's because things have been so hectic lately. New and new groups of their mage allies have been arriving, and she has to be there to make sure that they settle in properly. And speaking of settling in! She also has to watch over Dorian. To supply him with warm clothes and whatever modest batches of tea Josephine can get her hands on. And to keep the good people of Haven (she tries to think of them as good people, she really does, as they are all in her care, but sometimes they make her weep) from scrawling 'Maleficar' in chicken blood on the walls of the little cottage he was given as lodging.

And... It goes without saying that she needs to prepare for the march against the Breach. A daunting mission that makes restlessness crackle through the air in Haven like shock magic.

Or at least, it feels this way to her. Sometimes, the charge of this shock is so strong that she cannot walk straight, and has to lean against anything solid, be it the side of a building or a snow-capped mabari statue or the shoulder of one of her warrior companions (all so helpful, and so gorgeous, and not really deserving to be bothered by her like this) and whimper for a little bit.

But most often of all, it is to the dungeon that she goes to do her whimpering, and her rocking frantically from side to side, and her ripping into her fingernails with her teeth, and her staring ahead with unseeing eyes, dimmed by tears while the frenzied drumming brings her heart into her mouth, hot and slippery and metallic.

In here, no-one can catch her in this state, and be bothered by it, or start questioning if the Herald of Andraste is truly fit to do her duties. This place is nearly always empty, after all.

She remembers the Circle solitaries all too well, and those crystalline cells in the wrong future, and also the damp, rat-infested cellars where the humans that employed some of her neighbours as servants had them sleep. No-one, she decreed as the Herald of Andraste, the Andraste of the alienage, the Andraste that protects the small - no-one needs to suffer through something like this.

Her advisors do not agree with her all the time.

Cullen frowns and clears his throat.

Cassandra tosses her head up, measuring her with a gaze that is filled with unuttered objection.

Leliana narrows her eyes, which somehow grow less cold (a contradiction that Elgara might be imagining).

Even Josephine seems uncertain, but eventually opts for offering Elgara a glass of water when the tension in the war room congeals so much that her eyes start streaming with tears again.

So, while they imprison their foes far less often than could have been expected from an organization that calls itself the Inquisition, sometimes the guards do escort a chained captive or two down the dungeon steps... And the poor soul is surprised to find a well-lit room with a warm bed, a bookcase or two for entertainment, and a tray of food from Flissa's tavern sitting beside the barred door (the only thing that, along with the stone walls that loom hazily beyond the torchlight, reminds them that this is still a prison).

There are two people residing down here at the time.

One of them is the leader of the bandits that, for some purpose still unknown, were trying to scare away travellers in the eastern Hinterlands.

Elgara let most of his men go. After all, quite a few of them were former farmers, driven to banditry out of desperation when the demons razed their fields and the rogue Templars confiscated their tools, because some of them were vaguely mage-staff-like. Elgara hopes that Elaine, the horse master's wife, will find some honest work for them, now that the enchantment has been lifted off the local wolves, and her hold is thriving again.

A couple of the more... unfriendly bandits, prone to spitting in people's faces and shoving at their guardsmen and grunting with laughter when questioned about how they set fire to a refugee's belongings for fun, were given a chance to cool off while digging latrines under Quartermaster Threnn's supervision.

And their chief - a red-faced man with a protruding lower jaw, nearly as tall as Iron Bull and as bulkily built as a druffalo, especially around the neck - called Elgara a 'half-witted rabbit' when she made a list of peaceful jobs he could do around Haven, to make up for all the damage he and his crew had caused. Someone as big and strong would have been of great use. Hauling building supplies; helping put up more shelters for the people that flock to the Inquisition's banner... Such a waste.

After barking out his insult, the bandit chief proceeded to lunge at Elgara, intending to close his enormous hairy fist around her throat. She blocked his blow as best she could, straining the arm muscles that she had honed while practicing all that swordplay ('An enjoyable side benefit,' Solas had called them, while Sera made a giggling noise that rose from within her chest, together with a rush of pink, and said, 'Whoah, you are thick for an elf!').

Cassandra, in the meanwhile, brought him to his knees by slamming her shield against his shins, and off to the dungeon he went.

He likes the bed, Elgara thinks, and devours the food in shovelling handfuls, with many a belch in between. The books had to be taken away, though, after he tried to use one as a wipe when answering the call of nature in one of the... facilities that Threnn has so diligently built. Elgara would have asked Sera to draw him some picture stories, as they do to entertain the children of Haven - but she fears he will not appreciate them either.

The other prisoner, perhaps the most unusual one these walls have ever seen since the time Haven belonged to dragon worshippers, is the Tevinter magister from Redcliffe. Or, well, former Tevinter magister. Dorian is nearly certain that, once word of his work for the cult reaches the Imperium, he will be stripped of his rank, his house name, his land - to make a show of how the Archon wants nothing to do with 'these vile Venatori'.

Dorian mimed that last part in a mocking squeaky voice, while stroking an imaginary cat with his pinkie extended. Which was quite a funny impression, even to someone who had never met the Archon, which was pretty much the entire tavern (young Krem from the Bull's Chargers only caught a glimpse of him once, when he was passing in a festive procession down the street, but there were rows and rows of heads blocking his view).

Well, maybe Dorian's show was not really that funny, but Elgara collapses into hiccupping laughter just as easily as into tears these days... And yet again, it was a disguise. Meant to distract from the shadow that glides across Dorian's face whenever he talks about the magister.

They were friends once, as far as Elgara understands. Two brilliant mages, mentor and apprentice, working together on a spell that challenged the laws of time.

She wonders if they made each other laugh, like she so enjoys making her friends laugh.

If they had inside jokes and wild stories about rune circles that looked like stuffed bears if you squinted, or arcane volumes coming to life and chasing after the reader, trying to smack his bottom. Like the tall tales the apprentices in her Circle used to swap in the dorm, muffling their giggles into pillows and freezing up in silence whenever a Templar's footfalls clamoured by.

They must have, surely. But now the magister, who tried to erase Elgara from time upon the orders of his cult's would-be god, and created the wrong future instead, spends his days in his room with a barred door.

Quiet and wraith-like.

Empty-eyed like Uncle Killian in the days after his wife's funeral.

Not caring for the books on the shelves and the food on the tray.

He does not try to deface the former like the bandit, at least. Sometimes he even picks one up and flips the pages. But in all her visits to the dungeon, Elgara has never once seen the faintest light of interest in his eyes.

And the root cause behind his state is not even his cult's failure. Not the triumph of Elgara and her friends. Friends like Dorian, who did the most important, the most vital work, reversing the time magic in a matter of minutes, while Elgara was nearly brought to the floor by weeping for Cassandra and Solas and the others, as the demons trampled and shattered their crystallized bodies.

He did not even try to rant about how they foiled the Venatori's efforts and disrupted his grand scheme. Well, not too much.

The root cause is... his son.

The da'len whom he fought so hard to save from the Blight.

The da'len whom he watched leave, riding out of Redcliffe towards his destiny, with the same look in his bruised eyes as Mom and Mamae had when the Templars took Elgara.

He really does love his da'len, so very much that the force of the feeling echoed in Elgara's bones. And so did the pain of knowing that their story is going to have such a sad, sad ending.

The young Tevinter will die, and the man that his father once was, the man that Dorian admired, is gone. Like a spirit melting away in the flames of rage and grief, moulding into a demon; and then, when the demon is defeated, escaping out of its shattered carcass like a dying sigh.

With the dungeon thus... populated, Elgara tries to keep to the shadows. To sob into the empty dark. To leave the prisoners, the bandit and the magister, undisturbed. For all the wrong they have done, they do not deserve to be bothered by her either.

She has just finished up with crying, and is in the middle of taking slow breaths through her nose, to clear off the last of the dizziness that has been wrapped around her pulsing, half-split head like cottonwool - when a sharp voice with a thick rural Fereldan accent rips up the stillness of the dungeon. Rather like Cassandra's blade rips up her hapless training dummies.

'Oi! You lot! Time to stretch yer legs! 'Erald's orders!'

Elgara perks up, smiling to herself.

It's the guard on duty, about to take the prisoners out on their daily stroll around the back of the Chantry building. It's another thing that she insisted on. Another comfort for the Inquisition's captives, in addition to the nice beds and torches and food and books.

She may have been Tranquil when her tower's door swung open, and the mages walked out under the boundless, ever-changing sky that many of them had last seen as children. But she does recall how sweet the air was, washing away the dust of the book stacks that seemed to have caked on the inside of her lungs.

A little bit of such sweetness every day will do her prisoners some good, she decided. And she is glad to see that her request was approved by the advisors.

With that thought, the warmth and brightness touch her heart again. Like a sparkling wave of sunlit sea, the sensation carries her up, giving her strength to get to her feet and step forward. To meet the guard and the two hunched figures that he is herding. Even in this murk, her sharp night vision allows her to discern his features: all crinkled up in concentration, as he frowns at the thick ropes that he has just tied, in several tight loops, over the prisoners' wrists, to keep their hands restrained behind their back.

'Do you mind if I join you?' she says, trying to sniff as discreetly as she can, since her nose is still a bit clogged up.

'Course not, Yer Worship!' the guard replies, through the clanging noise his armour makes as he stands on ceremony.

He does not remain in this stiff, toy soldier pose for long, though. The chin straps of his helmet are rather poorly fitted, and he keeps adjusting it in sheepish, fidgeting motions as it slides to the side, again and again.

'If yer so inclined, could ye help me watch this lot? Might need an extra pair of eyes in case they get ideas 'bout escapin! Coulda gotten more backup, but the Commander says he cain't spare folks. I'll take this big thug here, and you can take the Vint. He seems more... whatcher call it... docile'.

The magister quirks an eyebrow - the first time Elgara has seen his face change expression since he was imprisoned - but does not have it in him to as much as scoff.

The bandit, too, merely strains his druffalo neck till his veins start bulging. As if he were keeping something pent up within him; some angry, malicious emotion that Elgara cannot quite read.

With no objections from the prisoners, the four of them set off in pairs. First, they climb up the stairs; then, they march along the candlelit main hallway (which, as Sera pointed out with a chortle, looks rather like a certain body part on the building's plan; that's something that Elgara also found far funnier than it probably was).

Along the way, Elgara spots Avexis, another Tranquil from Minaeve's little group. Standing with her back perfectly rigid and staring straight at the statue of Andraste in the alcove ahead of her.

Elgara calls her name and waves, but Avexis does not show any signs of hearing her. Not as much as a twitch of her ears.

She has been avoiding Elgara ever since she awoke from her Tranquility. Probably because she doesn't want to hear about her experiences. Not every Tranquil is too thrilled by the idea that their state can possibly be reversed (well, metaphorically: to be thrilled by anything at all would be against their nature), and Elgara cannot blame them. All the wonders of smiling and laughing do come at a heavy price.

As they exit the front gate, they turn a corner and begin to climb a snowy slope. For a moment, Elgara looks away from the magister, who is dragging his feet beside her, with each step accompanied by a juicy crunch as if someone were eating gigantic invisible apples - and allows her senses to carry her off. To somewhere far, somewhere special, where she can bask in that warmth and brightness again.

Everything is so beautiful out here.

The saturated, cloudless blue of the sky, so unlike the snaking billows of green and black that had swallowed the sun in the wrong future.

That apple crunch of snow underfoot.

The faint smell of something roasting that the wind brings from the village fires.

It has always been beautiful, of course, and Elgara's mind registered that even when it was swaddled in blankets. But now this beauty, like the beauty of the people she meets, can bring her happiness.

She feels a tingle in the corners of her lips, and it even seems to her that there are cheery little sparkles dancing before her eyes, shaping into soft, pastel-like silhouettes of flowers and birds, and just simple swirls, like fronds of some forest plant...

'Ah. Your mood seems to have improved all on its own. There is no need for this, then'.

Elgara blinks, coming back from her happy place. With a tiny jolt of astonishment, it dawns on her that the sparkles and the silhouettes are not imaginary, but have, in fact, been conjured by magic. They really are there: hovering right in front of her face, blossoming softly and melting from one shape to another, like the traces of raindrops on the window pane... And just as she makes her discovery, the apparitions vanish.

She blinks again, and turns her head to face the magister. His hands are still tied, but there is an unmistakable pull of arcane energy distorting the air around him; something that Elgara always senses very keenly, sometimes to the point of developing a migraine.

'Have you...' she asks uncertainly, not knowing how to address the man who went from negotiating with her for the freedom of the rebel mages, to shrieking that she should never have existed, to kneeling in her shadow and leaving himself to her mercy.

He jerks a shoulder, as far as he is able.

'I overheard you in the dungeon sometimes, and it occurred to me that I might try... brightening your spirits. I may be in binds, but I can still cast some very minor magic. Not enough to break free and slaughter everyone, as you would expect...'

He is being sarcastic, isn't he? This is probably sarcasm. Elgara lost all ability to understand it while she was Tranquil, but she thinks she is getting the hang of it.

'...But enough to put on this little... performance, especially since your human watch dog is lagging behind somewhere'.

He shakes his head, and goes on in a much quieter voice - likely not even addressing Elgara. Likely just talking aloud, like the enchanters that Elgara would walk in on sometimes as they were doing their research.

'A foolish impulse. Why would I do something like this for my enemy? I certainly have no answer'.

The grey pall drapes itself over his face more, and the lines on his forehead and in the corners of his mouth suddenly appear more prominent. Uncle Killian's figure looms in Elgara's mind, and she resolves to strum the lute. Metaphorically.

'No, no - it's... What you did is... It was really beautiful!'

Suddenly, she scrambles for words.

Suddenly, her heart feels like something is squeezing at it.

Suddenly, she does not know whether to look away or show her assurance by maintaining eye contact - and suddenly, when she chooses the latter, she gets carried off again, far, far away. Oblivious to everything in the world, except for studying the magister's eyes.

They have a very curious colour. Many mages' eyes do, she has noticed - even her own, which used to be more of a dullish, greyish, really indefinite colour when she was a Tranquil, are now back to the same bright blue shade that they assumed when she came into her magic.

His eyes, in turn, are shaded a beautiful dark brown, with a swirl of silver just around the pupil... Like rays of moonlight against a night sky.

It is only after she stubs her toe against a snow-covered rock that this odd daze releases her. She whips her head to look away so brusquely that the side of her neck feels like it has been stabbed by some kind of knitting pin. But at least this way, she finds out that they have meandered quite far up an icy mountain slope, leaving the Chantry a long way behind. The building has now been reduced to a blob of misty blue, which just barely peeks through the trunks of the fir trees that rise all around them, tipping their fuzzy heads in the wind, as if in a bow of reverence before the Breach.

This is... not quite what she imagined when she asked the advisors to let the prisoners go on walks.

Her feet shuffle to a halt, the tips of her boots cut off by the layer of dough-like snow they have dug into. With the same suddenness as her admiration of the magister's eyes, comes a nauseating surge of panic.

The guard is nowhere to be seen; the magister can still cast magic; he tried to kill her once already - twice, if you count their battle in the wrong future; what if he wasn't sarcastic...

No, no!

She bends forward slightly and digs her fingers into her hair. She used to wear it cropped close to her skull in the Circle, but has now started growing it out. Mostly so she can ruffle her bangs and let them hang like a curtain over her Tranquil brand, since to many people are startled at best, and deeply disturbed at worst, when they see the telltale sun on the brow of Andraste's chosen.

No! She is just being overemotional - again!

She handled the magister before, when he was much more powerful, with time-altering Rifts sizzling into being upon his command, splashing their acid light all over the darker, half-ruined version of the Redcliffe Castle throne room. Surely, she will be able to stop him as a half-starved prisoner! She does have her sword with her, as Cassandra insisted that she carry it at all times, even around Haven!

But then, she doubts that she'll ever get to use it. That she'll ever get to fight the magister at all.

She has nothing to fear from him, she tells herself, giving her hair a little tug to focus her thoughts.

She has nothing to fear.

She has never been afraid of spirits, remember? And he is just like one - just like Kindness.

That was the spirit from the sigil, which had been drawn to the Circle's corner of the Fade with the best of intentions. Eager to help the students learn and grow into better mages... But then, it was trapped and forced to tempt the young mages instead. This affront against its nature, together with the agony of being chained, made it change, made it darken, made its softness peel off like the flesh of the red crystal victim, revealing a pained snarl.

But even inside the demon that was born out of the trapped spirit's torment, a wisp of its original essence remained. Just a little bit of warmth and brightness. Like the sunlight squares that Elgara kept with her, packed safely in her memory trove, and carried through the coldest Circle nights.

That wisp called out to her, responding eagerly to her touch when she destroyed the sigil. And before she knew it, the demon's bulky, thrashing body turned into a distorted silhouette, as though someone had poured a bucketful of ink over its gnarly head. Presently, that silhouette thawed into a smoking black ink puddle, out of which a much smaller figure emerged, with its head inclined in gratitude.

It had always been there. Kindness had always been there. And it revealed itself to Elgara, because she was not afraid.

So why be afraid now? Why decide that the man from Dorian's past is gone, without giving him a proper chance to show himself?

Why give in to these messy emotions, when there are much better things she can feel?

Like trust, and confidence, and hope.

'I apologize for all these outbursts of mine,' Elgara says, with a clarity and a firmness in her voice that makes that excited puppy bounce in her mind.

She is really doing this!

She is getting a grip on herself!

She is straightening up, and turning back to him, and speaking to him not as a vile maleficar to be feared, but as a pleasant companion on a fresh-air stroll!

'I am a former Tranquil, you see. Getting the Mark that your master wanted to use - it brought my emotions back, but the side effect is that I cannot always control them properly. Not yet, at any rate. I am certain I will get better at it with time'.

To further show her point, she pulls back her bangs, allowing the magister to see her sun brand. And now, it is the magister's turn to be incapacitated by shock.

'You are... You were... You were one of...' he stutters, his perpetually weary face twisted by dismay. 'Fasta vaas'.

His shoulders jerk, as he tries and fails to move his bound hands.

'The key,' he breathes out. 'There was... I had a key. Your Spymaster confiscated it, probably. It opens the door to an abandoned shed in Redcliffe. There are... artifacts in there... Crafted on the Elder One's orders, which I passed on to the Venatori in the Hinterlands... Though I imagine other Venatori cells are doing the same all over the south...'

'Doing what?' Elgara asks, feeling as if a tight, perfectly attuned string had been drawn through her body, from tongue to stomach, cutting into her innards.

'Hunting the Tranquil,' he says under his breath, with his head dipped to his chest.

'The artifacts... the oculara... they are made from their skulls. I - I tried to hint to them... to your people... the Tranquil... that they were not welcome in Redcliffe... Tried to get them to flee... to save themselves... Because even when I was... I could not...'

He frowns deeply instead of finishing. His lips are twitching, and the moonlight in his eyes, before he shuts them, wincing, glints bright with moisture.

'The things I did for the glory of the Imperium... For the sake of my son... And what did it lead to? The Elder One will reshaped the world. He will make that future, the one Dorian yelled at me about, a reality, all over again... Felix will either succumb to the Taint, or perish in the storm to come... Your brethren will still be hunted, if not by me, then by the others who will replace me... I sold myself, over and over again - and it has all been meaningless'.

Elgara inhales, in several hoarse gasps, as if she were drowning.

The fear rears its head again, slithering up the back of her throat like a centipede, scarping her flesh raw. And as the wounds that it makes pulse and burn, she feels another emotion creeping in. Anger.

The Tranquil are being hunted! Her friends could be in danger, even inside Haven walls! She could lose Avexis, and Helisma, and others! And the man who had a hand in this is standing right in front of her!

Her jaw squared, she swallows hard, washing the creepy crawly down.

He regrets what he did. The wisp is in there. It must have always been there. She does not have to forgive him; not yet. But she can understand. She can reach out. And then, maybe, he will do what it takes to cast aside a demon's husk.

'You heard me crying in your dungeon and wanted to make my day a little brighter,' she reminds him, placing her hand on his arm just above the elbow. Not afraid. Not afraid.

'That is not meaningless. And your friendship with Dorian, your love for your son - that is not meaningless either'.

He opens his eyes, and then his mouth, the knot easing between his eyebrows - but before he can say anything, he is cut off by a loud cry.

Using a short-distance teleportation spell, or at least Fade Step, would probably have helped her get there faster. But over the few years of Tranquility, Elgara has come to rely on a blade, not magic, and she is still uncertain about returning to her Circle apprentice roots. Even if it makes Solas frown in disapproval and tell her that she is burying the great gift she was given.

So she chooses to do things the mundane, old-fashioned way.

She runs.

She lifts her legs at a rapid, threshing rhythm, her sword hilt clamouring against her hip; and really, really hopes in her heart of hearts that the ever-intensifying apple crunch of snow does not trigger another migraine. This would be a really inopportune time.

She runs, as fast as she can. And still not fast enough.

When she arrives at the source of the cry, she finds the bandit chief standing with his back against a large boulder, grating his tied hands fiercely over the edge of the guard's sword... Which is clutched in a stiff, frozen hand. A dead hand.

When the white blankets were still hiding all her emotions away, leaving her mind clean of distracting clutter, Elgara got very good at that deduction thing that they write about in novels where guardsmen track down criminals. Usually through the winding streets of a sprawling, anthill-like town like Kirkwall.

And even though the clutter is back, lodging in between the pieces of a puzzle she has to crack, sometimes she's still got it. Sometimes her eyes, where tears splash like liquid lyrium, can still spot the threads of logic - stretching between objects and people like spider webs.

She sees them now as well. She understands how they tie it all together.

The bandit.

The boulder.

The chaotic dots and dashes of tracks in the snow.

The Inquisition-issued pointy helm, which must have come off in the struggle because of those wretched chin straps.

The viscous smear of blood and bone matter that has painted the stone dark-red.

And the small armoured figure of the guard, which looks so still and hollow now, like the carcass of an ant that has been sucked dry by an antlion.

All of this takes far, far too long to describe. Her brain draws the connections much faster, and replays the story in lightning flashes.

The guard and his charge must have passed here on their walk, separated from Elgara as she was too caught up in talking to the magister. Then, seeing the boulder - just the right size, just the right height - the bandit must have seized his chance and, ramming his shoulder into the guard, overpowered him with his sheer weight, and sandwiched him between himself and the rock surface, pressing down till the protective helmet fell off, and the skull caved in.

And now, here he is. The druffalo about to charge. The bandit whom she tried so hard to help feel less burdened by his prison sentence. Driven to murder by his desire for freedom - which apparently was so strong that it kept fuelling the demonic side of him.

One last grating push - and the ropes come off. The bandit chief steps away from the boulder, and, with a smug grin, flexes his fingers - broad and square, like sausages someone drove a cart wheel over.

After the flexing, comes the looting. Just like in those guardsman books. Except real, and no less horrible even after Elgara has witnessed battle scenes that were so much more gruesome, so much worse.

The dead guard's armour is too small to fully protect the bandit - but his sword fits quite nicely into his fist. He greets Elgara with a spittle-filled curse - 'Let's hear ya cry about this, fucking knife-ear!' - and a tremendous whoosh of the soaring blade that, were it to come down like he planned, would have split Elgara's head in half, almost as badly as her migraines.

She yanks her own sword out of its sheath, nearly blinding herself with the blare of steel.

The bandit's blow is blocked, as is the next, and the next.

Her body fight of its own accord. Guided like a puppet by her sword fighter instincts - another useful 'side benefit'.

Whereas her mind, her over-cluttered, overemotional mind, is still with the poor guard. So sweet, so friendly, doomed to a stupid, stupid death because he did not have a good helmet. And an extra pair of eyes.

She was not there. She was not there.

He asked her to help out. He counted on her. But she forgot.

She took a wrong turn, let him out of her sight, left him behind to die.

She was not there.

These four words, like four slaps across her burning face, keep ringing in her head.

Louder than the clang-clang-clang of her sword.

Louder even than the sudden peel of thunder that rolls out somewhere from behind her back, while the entire clearing around the boulder is momentarily flooded with a pale purple glow.

Louder than the shriek the bandit lets out, staggering away from Elgara,

'You fucking Vint!'

And then, more shrieks, punctuated by panting as he tries to dodge the spears of lightning that pierce the ground all around him. '

'Siding with the elf bitch now, are you? After your fucking friends hired me and my boys to work for you? No matter! I hid away the gold you hooded fuckers gave me for the road job - and once I am outta here, I -'

The next spear must have finally hit its target. There is a whipping crackle, a gargle, a thud, a whiff of an acrid burning smell. But Elgara does not see the bandit fall.

She is on her knees again, hugging her head, whimpering, the four words rolling out of her mouth like vomit.

'I was not there... I was... not... there...'

Somewhere on the rim of her consciousness, a voice whispers. Soft, soothing, nearly unrecognizable. Far from the voice that gloated at the rebel mages been sold into servitude, or raved about the might of the Elder One,

'I know. I know'.

And then, Elgara tumbles into blackness.

When the world begins to take shape again, the boulder, or the guard, or the bandit, are nowhere to be seen.

Instead, there are more fir trees. Their bushy, frost-touched lower branches have formed a sturdy silvery roof over a patch of snow, which, in the lattice-like shade, seems almost as blue as Elgara's eyes.

A small circle of ground has been thawed clean - likely by fire magic, since its outline is far too smooth to be natural - and she has been seated in its middle, back firm against the trunk.

The magister is pacing back and forth in front of her. His soles are cushioned with a subtle turquoise glow, which must be muffling his steps; and his hands are untied. He must have followed the bandit's example and used something sharp to cut himself free... Maybe one of the poor guard's pauldrons...

Elgara shudders at the thought, with a loud whining noise at the back of her throat.

The magister stops pacing, suddenly on alert like a startled bird.

He rather looks like one, too, with his gaunt face and narrow, slightly curved nose. A very sad bird that has had its nest ravaged - and has still decided to take a stranger, an enemy, under its wing.

It truly is there - that wisp of the man Dorian was friends with.

'You...' the magister begins to explain, keeping his voice down and making a small gesture in the direction of the hillside beyond the trees' shelter. 'You were sobbing and shaking, and I reasoned you could use less light and noise. And...'

He smirks mirthlessly.

'And fewer dead bodies, naturally. So I teleported us here. And cast a healing spell, just to be on the safe side. Have you... recovered?'

Elgara passes her hand over her face.

Her fingers are unsteady, and she is drained almost like that ant she thought about when she saw the dead guard. But the urge to howl in tears has passed, as swiftly as it seized control of her.

'I - I think so. Thank you'.

'Hm'.

The magister purses his lips and looks away.

'Consider it me - awkwardly - trying to make up for the gruesome Tranquil hunt. And to thank you for your extraordinary treatment of your prisoners. I wish I had better appreciated the books you so graciously supplied me with'.

He glances quickly back at Elgara, and she almost stops hearing what she is saying to him, as long as she can see those moon beams in his eyes.

'No, I... I understand that you had a lot on your mind. I... certainly know what it's like'.

He gives her an absent nod, and turns back to gaze into nothingness. His fingers restlessly peel flakes of pine bark, while he begins to think aloud again.

'I have had students with a... predicament similar to yours. We Tevinters love breeding our sons and daughters like prized horses. The stronger their magic, the better. But strong magic often comes with fragile senses, easy to overload...'

He clears his throat, and directs his next question not at empty air, but at Elgara, leaving a long pause after each word to mull over the next.

'And I imagine it is the same for you as a former Tranquil, is it not?'

'I guess it is,' Elgara agrees.

Mysteriously, the more time she spends like this, amid the serenity of the winter woods, shielded from the... overloading world by these snowy branches, side by side with the man who once plotted against her, the stronger those warmth and brightness bloom inside her chest. When they reach their glowing peak, she blurts out,

'I am glad you were there'.

The magister moves his head slowly from side to side.

'Sing no false praise, Herald. Not in front of your advisors,' he says bitterly. 'I am still very much looking forward to meeting your kind headsman'.

Elgara's heart makes a rather painful leap up her windpipe - but she does not let this shatter the bright, warm sun squares in her mind.

'Actually, I... What I wanted to tell my advisors was that you had escaped while I was fighting the bandit. And that I could not find you anywhere'.

She giggles suddenly, and covers her cheeks, her skin scorched by a blush.

'I... have not lied often since my Tranquility was... cured... but... I think I have it in me'.

The magister tears away from the pine trunk, pulling his fingers out if the crevices in the bark like a cat pulls out its claws.

'You would let me go? Just like that? After all that I wrought?' he asks, his voice thinned out into a rusty creak.

'What is the point? I do not have anywhere to go. I am a wanted man out there, in Ferelden - and in here, I can at least have an execution. Like I deserve. Like I need'.

Again, Elgara senses a tide of pain rising around him, pouring a crackling ache deep into her bones. She jolts upright and, casting aside all of that Tranquil logic, not caring to waste even a single moment on thinking, grabs the magister's hand and squeezes it.

'You don't need to die,' she says earnestly. 'And if you go free, you can try making it to Tevinter. You can go home - like Felix wanted. You can be near him when he passes away'.

_You can do what it takes to revert from demon to spirit. Like Kindness did, when it, too, was set free._

'I...' the magister chokes, two red dots breaking out over his cheekbones.

Elgara wonders if she has squished his hand too hard, and drops it hastily - but his expression remains the same.

' I was so wrong about you,' he manages to squeeze out at last. 'I should never have called you a mistake. I apologize, Herald... And I wish... I wish we had met under different circumstances'.

'So do I,' she admits. Quite truthfully.

He bows to her - like he did during that charade of a meeting in Redcliffe. And yet... Not exactly like that. This time, there is no darkness pooling and bubbling around him. No malice in his eyes. Just... Just sadness.

'Farewell, Herald,' he tells her. 'I am not certain if your ambitious little expedition succeeds, but... It would have been interesting to see if it had'.

'Well, now I have to pull it off just to spite you,' Elgara says - and claps her hands against her mouth, petrified by the realization that she just... bantered!

She thought the skill lost to her, erased by Tranquility, just as her ability to decipher sarcasm. But she... She actually did it... She bantered!

And in response to her banter, the magister chuckles, before fading in a cloud of smoke. This must just be the effect of another teleportation spell - but Elgara thinks of Kindness again. Of how it was transformed from a demon back to a spirit. Maybe, the same will happen to the magister, if he finds his way.

There is a whole pantheon of gods out there. They probably care little about the fate of a Tevinter, a man whose kin once destroyed the kingdom of the People beyond repair. But they might listen to Elgara if she speaks on his behalf.

They might keep him safe.

They might bring him home.

Elgara smiles at the thought, running her fingertips along the grooves the magister left in the tree bark.

Well. Time to turn back to Haven.

Time to tell her lie, and then the truth.

To face the family of that poor guard, like the magister faced her, and to warn Leliana about the hunt for the Tranquil, so that she sends out scouts across Thedas. Rescuing as many as they can, from among those who are still wandering about, displaced when the Circles fell.

Maybe Madame Vivienne will have some ideas too.

All of these tasks will overwhelm her; more than once.

She knows they will.

But - but she is not afraid.

**Author's Note:**

> Spoiler alert: the old Vint did not actually reach his son. He got lost in the Frostbacks and was recaptured by the Inquisition at around the time of In Your Heart Shall Burn. But hey, it's the thought that counts, right? And it's not like I tend to let Felix die in my fic either. ;)


End file.
